The Lure and Hook of Majesty
by roisaber
Summary: Power. It can be used for good, or for ill. Even the best intentions can create ruinous disasters, and many who seek to save something end up destroying it with misguided ambitions. Princess Peach revives Smithy's Foundry and uses it to defend and extend the Mushroom Kingdom, but can those with great treasure also maintain their moral values?


Smithy knew he was dying. The sticky puddle of hydraulic fluid around him was too broad; the stench of sweet-smelling coolant was too thick in the air. But his eyes still glittered with perverse malice, and he gestured for Princess Peach to come closer. The Princess was suspicious, but royal honor demanded that she give her dying foe the benefit of a hearing.

"Power, Princess," Smithy rasped through his damaged speaker.

Mario and the others held back, their weapons at the ready.

"What are you talking about?" Peach asked warily.

"P-power. The power to give… eternal peace… to the MushroomKingdom. I repent. The code to the CPU is … zero six one six…"

Peach asked, "What is a … CPU?"

"Controls… the Foundry. You might still be able…" Smithy choked out a thick glob of black motor oil, and then his eyes went dark.

"Princess! Are you alright!?" Mario asked, rushing to her side.

Peach looked down at the villain, now nothing more than a brick of dead electrodes and shorted circuits. "I'm fine, Mario. Thank you. But Smithy said something… I wonder."

"H-hey!" Mallow exclaimed. "The power core is overloading without anyone to control it! This place is coming down around us!"

There was a loud crack from the ceiling above them, and a catwalk tore free of its cables and fell onto the ground near the group with a deafening crash. Peach caught sight of some kind of control panel, and ignoring the loud cries of Mario and the rest of the party, she made her way over to it, uncertain. Geno materialized at her side.

"I'm not allowed to interfere, Princess. But think very, very carefully about what you intend to do."

"I know," she told the possessed doll.

There was a large keypad in one corner of the control board, and with a shaking hand, she keyed zero-six-one-six into the panel. There was a brief pause, and then a red access light turned green. Princess Peach rapidly scanned the rest of the panel, looking for a solution to the crisis that was tearing apart the pocket dimension that had so ruthlessly invaded the MushroomKingdom. Finally, she found a switch hidden behind a Molly guard that read, EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN. She smashed the protective glass with the butt of her frying pan, and then flipped the switch.

At once, the roar shaking the entire facility went silent. Peach, and the others, were almost deafened by the sudden silence ringing in their ears, replacing the furious rumbling of uncontrolled collapse. A few more overpressurized pipes or overheated furnaces blew up, but it seemed that the facility itself would be saved. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

"Princess… what exactly are you planning?" Mallow asked.

"Smithy whispered something to me before he died." She took her hand and regally waved it across the arc of her vision, as if to encompass the entire foundry within the crook of her arm. "He said that the tools of this facility could be used to bring peace to the MushroomKingdom, instead of violence. I believe he might be right. It's not the tools themselves that are evil, it is who uses them, and how."

Peach didn't admit it out loud, but she was thinking of Bowser's fleet of airships. Always at the ready, always prowling, always trying to impose Bowser's self-centered will on the innocent Toadstool people. She realized she was staring at the Koopa King and quickly looked away.

"Hey, lady!" Bowser grumbled in his guttural, grating voice. "What the Hell are you thinking? The Smithy gang is bad news. We need to get rid of this place."

Princess Peach ignored him, trying to make sense of all the dials, buttons, switches, and lights.

"Even a stopped clock can be right twice a day Princess," Mario interjected. "Bowser's right; this place is dangerous."

"Dangerous to whom?" Peach replied with suddenness that even surprised herself. "This foundry has a level of technology we've never seen before in the MushroomKingdom. We can barely manufacture basic plumbing and a few kilowatt hours of electricity for every town – this facility is obviously capable of producing more power in every hour than the MushroomKingdom uses in a whole year. There's no way I can allow that to go to waste when it could be used to benefit my people, instead."

"Mario, you're always telling me stories about the world you're from. Of towers dozens of stories tall, made of glass, bright enough to light up the whole countryside for leagues and leagues! Are we in the MushroomKingdom not good enough to enjoy the same level of sophistication? Are we doomed to be a backwater forever? Should we just destroy anything that might potentially threaten us instead of learning how to use it to benefit us instead?"

"Princess, I didn't mean –" Mario stammered.

Geno stood off to the side with his arms folded across his chest, but Mallow wasn't willing to give up just yet. The fluffy young cloud boy could be surprisingly strident.

"Your Majesty, how can you be sure? Do you have any idea how to work that thing? What if you accidentally restart production of the bad guys, or hit the wrong button and blow this whole place sky-high? _You_ might think it's worth the risk, but do you have the right to decide that for everyone?"

"We are Royalty! Making weighty decisions – taking responsibility for Our subjects – that is the meaning of duty!" Princess Peach replied, drawing on all her lessons in royal diction. She turned to Geno. "Are you against Us too?"

He stared back at her, as wooden and unreadable as ever.

"The question is… outside my jurisdiction. As long as the Star Road is repaired, what happens in the MushroomKingdom must be considered an internal matter. I don't have the authority to interfere. I apologize, Princess, but I cannot advise you one way or the other."

"What about my castle?" Bowser demanded. "The only reason I joined you chuckleheads is because I wanted my keep back."

Peach answered levelly, "You'll get what's coming to you, Koopa King. In fact, if we can understand this Foundry and utilize its powers, we can get your castle repaired in no time."

Mollified, Bowser preened the scales of his arm, checking for loose scutes.

The Princess softened her demeanor. "But it doesn't have to get done all at once. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm exhausted. Let's return to ToadTown. I'll get the Chancellor down here at once, with engineers. I promise, I won't allow this facility to restart until we understand what it can do, and how to use it responsibly."

"Okay, Princess."  
"I'm starving!"

"You better be right about fixing my castle."

[AUTHOR:] I get these crazy ideas for stories that I think might be short and then in my minds eye I can see how they could become big, involved novellas and then sometimes I finish them and sometimes I don't after all I have a job and I'm busy and all that so I have no idea whether this will end up a 60,000 word epic (as far as FF goes) or just stop right here and never be picked up again. Stay tuned! he says not without irony.


End file.
